The age of the discoveries.

The early 1400's brought about great advances in European exploration.
In order to make trade more efficient, Portugal attempted to find
a direct route by sea to India and China. By using a direct water
route, Arab merchants, who owned the land trade routes, would no longer
be able to profit from the European trade merchants. After Columbus
discovered the New World in 1492, it was clear that conflict would
soon arise over land claims by Spain and Portugal. The Portuguese
also wanted to protect their monopoly on the trade route to Africa
and felt it was threatened. It was only after the realization that
Columbus had found something that was neither Asia nor an Island,
that land became the important issue. The newly discovered land held
great potential wealth which could benefit European nations.

On May 4, 1493 Pope Alexander IV took action to clear up any confusion
that may have arisen over territorial claims. He issued a decree which
established an imaginary line running north-south through the mid-Atlantic,
100 leagues (480 km, 298 mile) from the Cape Verde Islands. Spain
would have possession of any unclaimed territories to the west of
the line and Portugal would have possession of any unclaimed territory
to the east of the line.

After further exploration, the Portuguese grew dissatisfied with
the agreement when they realized how much more land Spain had been
given. In June of 1494 the line was renegotiated and the agreement
was officially ratified during a meeting in the Spanish town of Tordesillas.
The Treaty of Tordesillas re-established the line 370 leagues (1,770
km) west of the Cape Verde Islands.

It was evident that little exploration had taken place at the time
the treaty was signed because Spain was granted a much larger portion
of land. Portugal was only given possession of Brazil. Portugal pushed
the border of Brazil westward, over the next several hundred years.
Because the line was not very well defined, the Spanish did not put
up any opposition to this Portuguese expansion. The Protestant countries
did not, of course, agree to this treaty.

In 1498 the Portuguese Vasco Da Gama discovered the route to India
around Cape of Good Hope. He reached Calicut on the west coast of
what is now India, from where he returned to his homeland with a small
cargo. A second expedition followed in 1502-03. In 1524 Da Gama became
the first viceroy in India. His fellow countryman Alfonso de Albuquerque
reached the peninsula of Malacca.

Despite their efforts to avoid conflicts by means of the treaty of
1494, the Spanish and the Portuguese fell into new conflicts, because
they did not take into account that the world was round. In 1519 the
Portuguese Fernao de Magelhaes sailed with 5 ships under Spanish flag
in western direction to find a new route to the Indies. On the 21st
of October he sailed with three ships through the strait which is
named after him. In three months he crossed the Pacific, tormented
by lack of food and water. In the spring of 1521 they reached the
archipelago which became later known as the Philippines, named after
Philips II. Magelhaes was murdered there.

Soon the Spanish also went on an expedition in eastern direction
to reach the Philippines via the Cape of Good Hope. In the course
of the 16th century the Spaniards from the Philippines and the Portuguese
from the Moluccas went further and further northward. The Isle of
Tai-oan (Taiwan) was discovered, which the Spaniards called Hermosa
and the Portuguese Formosa. For the time being neither the Spanish
nor the Portuguese succeeded in establishing a permanent settlement
over there.

In 1542 by coincidence a Portuguese ship ended up in Japanese waters.
The Portuguese obtained a permit from the Japanese government to establish
a trade post on the island of Hirado . For almost a century the Portuguese
traded from this enclave with the Japanese. Because they also developed
missionary activities and tried to preach Christianity in Japan, they
were exiled to the island of Deshima in 1636 and in 1638 completely
deported. Since maps in general were considered to be a state secret
in Spain and in Portugal, only very few of them survived. The Portuguese
and Spanish made mainly portolans (maps showing only coastlines and
harbors), which were unique and only found in manuscripts. The few
of them which survived are found mainly outside of Spain and Portugal.
They fall beyond the scope of this article.

Dutch cartography

In spite of the turmoil caused by the harsh measures of Philips II
of Spain, the Dutch thrived and first Antwerp and later Amsterdam
became the centers of the arts and of the cartographers.

The first eminent cartographer was Gerard Mercator (1512-1594), who
studied in Leuven (Louvain) under Gemma Frisius, Dutch astronomer
and mathematician, and moved later to Duisburg in the Rhineland as
a religious fugitive, where he carried out his major work. He was
already regarded during his own lifetime as the "Ptolemy of his
time" Mercator regarded himself more as an academic cosmographer
rather than someone who had to earn his living from making and selling
of maps. His production was not very large. He left behind a pair
of globes, five wall maps and an unfinished cosmography.

He was born in Rupelmonde in Flanders, south west of Antwerp, in
1512. He was educated by the "broeders des Gemenen Levens"
in 's-Hertogenbosch, after which he studied at the University of Leuven
where he studied under Gemma Frisius.. He had trained himself in the
meantime in the art of engraving. Mercator was the first to employ
italic script on maps. This embellished the map to such an extent
that it remained customary untill the 19th century to place names
on maps in italics.

Next
is the worldmap of Mercator shown, this is a wall map and very big.
Mercator's work doesn't depict Korea at all.

This is a detail from the same map

His son Rumold inherited the copper plates of his father's atlas
and published an appendix of 34 maps to the atlas his father made,
a year after his father's death. In order to be able to complete the
work quickly, he added his own map of the world of 1587 and had three
maps of the continents from his father's great map of the world of
1569 copied by his two nephews Gerard Mercator Junior and Michel Mercator.

Commercial map makers followed Mercator's example and the production
of maps expanded from a subsidiary into the basic economic activity
for a large group of people. The period from around 1550 to the end
of the 17th century is called the Dutch age of cartography and a map
made in Amsterdam guaranteed good quality. Since maps initially were
made of loose sheets, the need for larger maps could only be fulfilled
by making a number of sections which were printed separately, after
which the maps were glued together. Decorative as they became, they
were hanged on the wall and most of them did not survive due to exposure
to sunlight, humidity, smoke, soot etc. Some excellent examples can
be found in the Vermeer paintings. Some collectors however kept their
wall maps as loose sheets or bound them into a cover. A collection
of loose folio maps, bound together for convenience formed the prototype
of an atlas. The atlas of Abraham Ortelius, the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum
of 1570 is regarded as the first atlas.

Abraham Ortelius (1527 - 1598) began his career as an "afsetter
van caerten" (illuminator of maps). He later also ran a business
in curiosities and Netherlands and foreign objets d'art. The goods
he sold included maps, which he imported mainly from Italy - the center
of cartography in the mid -16th century. He knew Mercator personally
and this may have encouraged him not only to sell Italian maps, but
also to sell more original work. So he was active from around 1560
in producing his own maps. The idea from producing an atlas, came
most likely from a commercial and practical idea. One
of his customers, the merchant Gilles Hooftman, wanted all the maps
he could get. But the big maps, enrolled in cylindrical cases, were
unhandy. Hence the idea of producing an atlas, in which the maps were
shown in a handy format. This is one of his maps from this atlas.

The
next map shows Ortelius Indiae Orientalis from the Theatrum, Antwerp,
1570. Japan has the typical kite shape introduced by Mercator. Mermaids,
sea monsters and shipwrecks are shown. Portuguese coat of arms shown
to emphasize that this is "their" part of the world.

It took a long time before the region was "decently" mapped,
both in position and in shape. Since the middle-ages Japan was depicted
as Chipangu or Zipangu. The Portuguese reached Japan in 1542. Till
in 1641 all foreigners, except the Dutch, had to leave the country,
missionaries offered the most cartographic information about the country.
The data from the Jesuits was accordingly revised by the official
Portuguese cartographers, like Fernao Vaz Dourado (1520 - c. 1580).
We find this shape on several maps thereafter. He gave Japan the shape
of the back of a tortoise, like it was depicted already in the second
half of the sixteenth century. The changes went so fast that in the
same period several anachronisms coexisted. On the small world maps
and the maps of Asia the 16th century shape is still to be seen, while
in Jan Huygen van Linschoten's Itinerary of 1595 the traditional shape
of Vaz Dourado shows. We will call this round shape, used by van Linschoten,
the Vaz Dourado type, since the rest of the map is similar to
Vaz Dourado's. To recognize this map one has to realize that the east
is up on this map. Fernao Vaz Dourado is called "one of the foremost
of all cartographers." Six of his manuscript atlases survived,
dated from 1568 to 1580. He worked mostly in Goa, India. Born around
1520 probably in India, he died probably in or shortly after 1580.
During 1568-71 he made maps of the Indies including a World Map and
from 1568-80 he published a Sea Atlas. This map comes from the Atlas
of the Indies, (1568) by Vaz Dourado

The
map to the right is from Hendrick Florent van Langren. It's an east-oriented
map of East Asia. Amsterdam 1596. This map comes from the Itinerario.